Jennifer Lopez Having ‘Worst Year of Her Life’ Amid Ben Affleck Divorce: ‘She’s Been in Tears’
The first time Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck broke up, her world fell apart. “It was the biggest heartbreak of my life,” she said in 2022, looking back at how she felt after they called off their 2003 wedding before splitting in 2004. “I honestly felt like I was going to die. It sent me on a spiral. I just couldn’t get it right.”
She still can’t get it right. Jennifer and Ben wed in 2022 after reconciling in 2021. But her second chance at a happy ending imploded less than two years later, with their marriage falling apart amid a growing career crisis. “J. Lo has been through a lot in her life, but this year has really tested how much pain she can withstand,” a source exclusively tells In Touch. The actress-singer’s decision to divorce her fourth husband has “devastated her. She wanted to try to work on their marriage, but Ben checked out, and it was hopeless. When she realized that, she filed.” She revealed they separated in April. “Though she’s putting on a brave face in public, behind closed doors she’s been in tears. It’s the worst year of her life.”
WAVE OF BAD LUCK
The first hints of trouble emerged in February when Jennifer released three projects exploring her life as a serial romantic that she self-financed for $20 million — an album, This Is Me … Now; a movie, This Is Me... Now: A Love Story; and a documentary, The Greatest Love Story Never Told. Red flags waved as Ben addressed in the doc their disparate feelings about privacy: He craves it while she courts attention. Meanwhile, Jennifer’s album struggled to find an audience, selling only about 14,000 copies in its first week. And audience response to the movie and documentary was lukewarm.
It was all downhill from there. By May, Ben had moved out of their marital home, which they’ve been unable to sell after listing it for $68 million, and into a rental property around the corner from ex-wife Jennifer Garner, 52, with whom he’s coparenting kids Violet, 18, Fin, 15, and Samuel, 12. The same month, Jennifer weathered more career blows: Her Netflix movie, Atlas, debuted to poor reviews. (Only 19 percent of critics liked it, according to movie review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.) Days later, she canceled her summer concert tour, citing a need to “be with her children, family and close friends,” while reports alleged ticket sales were poor.
Then more humiliation followed. The same day Jennifer turned 55 in July, Ben, 52, purchased a new $20.5 million home for himself in LA. Weeks later in August, she finally filed for divorce. “Some people think J. Lo waited to file for divorce because she didn’t want it to happen around the time of her canceled tour, but that’s not the case,” says a source. “She was still holding on to her marriage.”
